GoetheKino|GoetheCine
Director: Heiner Carow, colour, 112 min., 1989
East Berlin in the late eighties: Philipp, a young teacher, begins a love affair with his colleague Tanja. For years, he has kept his real sexual orientation a secret, until a re-encounter with his former gay friend, Jacob, once again makes him aware of his suppressed longings. In a gay bar, Philipp meets Matthias and falls in love with him. From then on, the teacher leads a double life. Tanja knows nothing about Matthias, nor does Philipp tell Matthias about his relationship with Tanja. It’s just a matter of time before things go awry. COMING OUT was the first and only feature film in the GDR to openly examine the theme of homosexuality. It premiered on 9 November 1989, the evening on which the Berlin Wall fell.
An ambulance races through East Berlin, bringing Matthias to a hospital. The young man has just tried to commit suicide. Now the doctors have to pump his stomach. This was a very dramatic sequence in which the actor actually had to swallow a tube and fight against choking until sweat started to pour down his face. Director Heiner Carow does not even try to simulate the ordeal by editing the scene. In his production, there is a realism that sometimes also causes the spectator to feel pain. “Why did you do that?” a doctor asks. Matthias cries: “I’m gay!” COMING OUT tells the story of how this attempted suicide came about.
Philipp introduces himself to a class as their new teacher. In the corridor, he accidentally bumps into his future colleague Tanja, who has been injured so badly that he has to tend to her bleeding nose. This is also a prophetic image. The two begin to date, fall in love and sleep with one another. Soon Philipp moves into her flat. He’s a good, idealistic and passionate teacher, sometimes so unconventional that his supervisor interferes in a strict and stubborn manner. In its subtext, the film shows considerable doubt about authority figures. Sometimes Philipp, who unconsciously seeks to resist his circumstances, responds quite angrily to the conformist and dispassionate work of his students.
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